External References

External references allow you to mash up Places (Search) API features with services and data provided by other systems in a bidirectional way:

If you want to associate a place that you have found through Places (Search) API with information from another system, Places (Search) API provides access to identifiers used by external systems. Depending on license agreements you have with the external systems, you can interact with them, using their identifiers.

If you find a place in an external system, but would like to interact with it using Places (Search) API, you can look up the place in Places (Search) API with the help of the identifier from the external system.

The features outlined above allow your application to combine multiple systems, without the overhead of matching and de-duplication of place content coming from multiple sources.